Jazz Trumpeter Al Hirt, 76, Symbol Of New Orleans Music

Despite his international fame as a symbol of New Orleans music and bonhomie--or perhaps because of it--Al Hirt rarely received serious recognition as a trumpeter.

But the classically trained virtuoso, who died Tuesday in his Crescent City home at age 76, ranked among the most formidable trumpet soloists of his generation.

"I found Al Hirt to be an absolutely natural player," said New Orleans jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis, who worked in Mr. Hirt's band beginning in 1967.

"He played with a level of proficiency that made what he did on his instrument look easy, which it wasn't.

"I remember one time a salesman gave him a new (trumpet) mouthpiece during a break in our set," added Marsalis, speaking from New Orleans. "And Al took off his regular mouthpiece, put the new one on and headed right back to the stage.

"And I'm thinking, `No way is this cat going to play anything hard with a new mouthpiece he's never tried before.'

"But Al picked up that trumpet and bounced a double-C (a stratospheric note) right off the back wall of the place. That's the kind of trumpet player Al Hirt was."

Born in New Orleans, Alois Maxwell Hirt was a trumpet prodigy who eventually studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, starting in 1940. Two years later, he left to take a coveted seat in the 82nd Army Air Force Band, where he spent most of his military service, before playing in big bands led by Horace Heidt, the Dorsey brothers and Ray McKinley.

Weary of the touring life, however, Mr. Hirt returned to New Orleans in 1950 and gingerly began playing Dixieland jazz, at first playing horn parts written out for him.

But Mr. Hirt caught on to the improvised jazz language so felicitously that he quickly became a major attraction in various Bourbon Street clubs. The local acclaim led to his first major, out-of-town booking, at the Palmer House in Chicago, in 1959.

Within two years, Mr. Hirt was a national star, performing at the 1961 inaugural ball of President John F. Kennedy and selling more than 100,000 copies of his first LP, "The Greatest Horn in the World" the same year.

His outsized trumpet sound earned him a Grammy award in 1963 for the single "Java," while his ebullient performance manner inspired appearances in motion pictures (including "Rome Adventure," in 1963) and on television (his own summer-replacement program, "Fanfare," in 1965 on CBS).

Although he received little credit for it, Mr. Hirt was among the first white New Orleans bandleaders to hire African-American players, in the 1950s, and he gave a young Wynton Marsalis his first trumpet.

"I couldn't care less what jazz purists say," Mr. Hirt once told the Richmond News Leader in response to the criticisms. That feisty spirit may have helped Mr. Hirt continue playing trumpet after his lip was struck by a brick in 1970, during a Mardi Gras parade.

Recently, the indomitable trumpeter had been performing in a wheelchair due to leg problems.

Mr. Hirt, who recorded more than 50 albums, is survived by his wife, Beverly Essel Hirt, and six children from a previous marriage.